Nebula Award winning author and NCSU professor John Kessel, who grew up enjoying picking up L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz books as they were published at the beginning of the last century and was of an, er, “advanced” age by the time Tolkien finally got to work, off-handedly quipped that “I know the world does not care, but nobody could pay me enough money to go see ‘The Hobbit.’ Well, maybe someone could, but nobody is going to.” Well… Brent Winter suggested an eBay auction and Kij Johnson a Kickstarter, adding that to work, it would have to be collected for a charity, and John offered that the SFWA Medical Fund would do just fine. So! Let’s do this.

NOTE: I am not an agent of SFWA and am not collecting any money. Only pledges. Pledgers please use the SFWA form to donate to the SFWA Emergency Medical Fund. (And then come back here and add your pledge, so we know your donation is meant to spur on this effort!)

How is this going to work? We’re going to collect pledges for donations to the SFWA Emergency Medical Fund. Once pledges reach certain levels, additional “scenarios” are unlocked. Here are the tiers as agreed to by Prof. Kessel:

$250 — Prof. Kessel goes to see The Hobbit (the upcoming Peter Jackson version, in a movie theater before the end of the year, no cop-out home screenings of the Bass-Rankin animated classic) — REACHED (Brent Winter)

$2500 — Prof. Kessel will dress as Galadriel when watching the film (and yes there will be documentary evidence) — REACHED (Anonymous #3)

BONUS: If we reach $2500, there’s also a “Dial-a-Rant” offer from Melinda Thielbar for the biggest pledge

As to whether or not Prof. Kessel can “pull off” Gandalf? Witness:

I’ll keep pledges and totals updated here, until/if we get a bigger/better place on board to do this. OK. Let’s go! If you want to pledge publicly, just comment here on the post, or mention @bullspec on Twitter, etc. Privately/anonymously, email me at sam@bullspec.com — happy pledging! It’s a short turn around time, but let’s have all pledges in by the end of Monday December 17 — so John knows what to wear and whether or not to skip second breakfast (or at least elevensies) to save room for that Ring Burger! (And to give us some time to prepare the correct costume…)

UPDATE: THANKS EVERYBODY! Thanks especially to our Nth hour anonymous donor who contacted me and asked how much was left, and indeed, pledged it all. Unbelievable. New post soon, check for the tag KesselHobbit for photos and video to come. Now we have some work to do on wardrobe…

UPDATE: From John: “I just came back from choosing the gown I will wear as Galadriel tomorrow afternoon at Denny’s, and then at the 4:15 or 4:30 showing of The Hobbit at the North Hills theater. I need to thank all of the people who pledged to the SFWA Emergency Medical Fund in order to make this humiliation possible. You have done some real good for a worthy cause, and you should be proud of yourselves when you are not feeling ashamed for putting me through this. There will be photos and videos, I am told, and I must say with all due modesty that I am stunning in white. Review to follow.”

When Baen associate editor Laura Haywood-Cory sent me the following, my first response was an expletive. Not only has Baen re-released John Kessel’s novels in DRM-free ebook formats, which would be noteworthy enough, they’ve also just published a huge collection of Kessel’s short fiction, The Collected Kessel, comprising 42 of Kessel’s stories including Nebula winners “Another Orphan” (novella, 1982) and “Pride and Prometheus” (novelette, 2008), and brand new story notes. My favorite of these so far comes from his notes on “Pride and Prometheus”, which after giving the germination of the idea behind the Austen/Shelley mashup novelette, also says something quite interesting: “My career, in retrospect, has been to cross the sensibilities of literary fiction with those of pulp fiction, and this story is one way in which that impulse has expressed itself.” Well, here are 42 stories (and the novels, too) which are the career, so far, of one of our American writing treasures. Cheers, John, and one of these days I’ll get somebody to give me a little warning when something like this is coming…